The Path of Righteousness
by Blurgle
Summary: Thomas More gives his life for his King.
A/N: This idea comes from the Challenges board on the forums here at ff dot net, but I'm not telling you which one. Yes, there's a reason. I also have to credit the lovely codeine cough syrup I was prescribed yesterday.

* * *

Palace of Placentia  
21 June 1529

Henry paced up and down the length of his study, past the books, past the portraits of his predecessors, past the gold astrolabe, past the candlesticks and vases and bas-reliefs and bronzes and alabaster sculptures and tapestries.

None of it mattered right now; all that mattered was his son.

It had been just over nine months ago, just after the great pestilence had swept through England, that Cardinal Campeggio had arrived in England to prepare for the trial of his Great Matter. Thomas Wolsey, that master of subtlety and common sense, had counselled Henry to make a show of sharing Katherine's bed – just the bed, of course, nothing more – as evidence of his sincerity. Easier said than done, he'd thought at the time; Anne had been both furious and terrified of what would happen, and he'd had to drink himself into a blind stupor on the evening of the feast of St. Gregory just to get up the nerve to lay beside that dried-up old husk of a sister-in-law.

In retrospect that had been his undoing.

He'd known something was wrong the moment he woke up with a throbbing headache and Katherine nude in his arms, relaxed and content, a telltale damp spot beneath them; two months later she'd given him the news he'd been waiting to hear for ten years. His joy – and it was very real – had been tempered only by the awareness that were the child born a son, his birth would be the death knell of Henry's relationship with Anne.

Anne had smashed every vase in her rooms when she'd heard, and he hadn't blamed her one bit.

Who he had blamed was Wolsey. The man should have known! Katherine might play the gracious, gentle lady but she was the daughter of that arch-schemer Ferdinand of Aragón; as such she'd known exactly what to do to tie himself to her. He'd sent the Cardinal from court, had even considered prosecuting him for – well, for whatever he could get to stick – but then Tom More had fallen ill from a strangury which was, according to the doctors, neither contagious nor curable. He'd pleaded to be allowed to speak to Henry one last time on a matter of 'immediate urgency'; what else could Henry do but travel to Chelsea and hear him out?

His friend had indeed been on the brink of death. "I have an urgent…matter to discuss with Your Majesty," he ground out through cracked lips as Henry dismissed More's daughter and took a seat beside his bed. "It…it regards…"

"What is it, Tom? If it's your family I swear I'll make sure they're cared for."

His clouded, sunken eyes met Henry's and he shook his head. "Is Anne with child?" he asked.

He'd blinked, dumbfounded, but before he could formulate a reply Tom spoke again. "God…granted me a vision on St. Gregory's Day…my life in exchange…a healthy prince. If Anne…"

"No, old friend," he said, doing his best to keep himself together, "it's Katherine. We conceived a child on – on St. Gregory's Day."

Tom's eyes widened in shock. "Kath – God be praised. He will be a great King…great man…" but then he fell back onto the pillow, too weak to get out another word.

News of his death arrived at court three days later.

Tom's sacrifice had changed everything. Wolsey he'd welcomed back to court, for if this pregnancy were indeed God's holy handiwork no man deserved any sort of blame for it – but if it were to be a boy as Tom had said, he couldn't figure out exactly who had first tricked him into seeing his marriage to the Queen as untrue. Despite the work Wolsey had put into the Great Matter Henry knew he'd never considered the union truly invalid so he was off the hook, and Anne…despite her temper she'd never uttered a word that wasn't an echo of his own former beliefs or her father's, and as a woman she could never begin to understand or affect the theological arguments surrounding the conflict.

No, it had been Anne's father Lord Rochford himself who had whispered in his ear of incest and annulment, of bastardizing Henry's Pearl and getting a fine prince off his daughter Anne. He'd immediately banished Boleyn from court but he'd been stumped as to how to punish him – but then the hand of God had brought his son George to his door with a stomach-churning tale of vials and powders and 'wise women of ill repute', as he'd put it. "It might be unfilial to inform on my lord father but I'd rather answer to God for that sin than condone treason," George had told Henry once he'd finished; he'd thanked the boy, praising him for his honesty and honour, and sent him away with orders for Mary to be moved to Greenwich and for every one of her and Katherine's servants to be sent to the Tower and interrogated.

Two men and six women had gone to the hangman, and one – Lord Rochford – had knelt before the headsman.

He might have granted the elder Boleyn a stay if Anne had pleaded for his life but she'd flatly refused. "I would rather be hanged than step to the throne over the blood of a Prince and Princess of England," she'd declared to Stephen Gardiner, who despite his deep antipathy to her had believed her implicitly. He'd written that she was 'a loyal if temperamental woman caught in a web of vile parental deceit', and gave his opinion that she had more honour in one little finger than Rochford had ever possessed in his entire body.

But Anne's honour hardly mattered; even if Katherine died giving their child life he couldn't marry her now. No matter how honourable she was, no matter how honourable her brother was (and he'd gone out of his way to make sure George received his entire patrimony), he knew full well God would never allow a King of England to sire a prince on a traitor's daughter.

Katherine, of course, had not been told of Boleyn's crimes or his death. Henry would not have shock take away what Tom More had sacrificed his life to give.

He swept the curtains aside, his eyes on the Thames sparkling in the starlight. The first news had come from the confinement chambers just as he was sitting down to supper; it must be midnight at least—

The door behind him flew open. "Your Majesty!"

He spun around, praying that the worst hadn't – but Charles's face was wreathed in smiles. "The biggest, strongest boy any of her ladies have ever seen!" he crowed. "And the Queen came through it in fine shape!"

He had a son: a living, healthy son - and his wife lived.

He fell to his knees, tears falling freely as he gave thanks to God for this miracle. He'd almost fallen into heresy and bigamy, had almost had lost his son, his wife, and the pearl of his world. "This is the Lord's doing," he said, crossing himself, "and it is marvellous in our eyes."

Charles held out his hand to help him up. "Congratulations, Harry."

"I didn't think this day would ever…" but he waved away that thought as he rose to his feet. "Never mind that, Charles; take me to her – and send for Mary!"

Katherine was already on the great state bed, exhausted but triumphant, a large, squirming bundle nestled in her arms. "May I present Your Majesty—"

But before she could say another word he took the enormous, utterly perfect infant from her. "There's only one name we can give a bruiser like this," he said, looking down into her smiling face. "Thomas. He gave his life for this boy, Kate."

"And for the kingdom," she said. "God works in ways we mortals can seldom understand, but I know Sir Thomas would have sacrificed himself a hundred times for you."

Just then the infant began to wail so loudly Henry feared for the glassware. "I hope the wet nurse is strong," he said to Lady Willoughby as she plucked the infant from his arms. "We might have to hire a second one to keep up with this lad."

She could only smile. "We'll hire as many as we need, Majesty; Prince Thomas is the future of England."

And indeed he was – as was his mother. "I don't know how I can thank you enough," he said to Katherine once they were alone. "I don't know how I can atone for having been led to distrust you. God has shown me the path of righteousness, Kate, and I don't intend to lose my way again."

A tear fell down her cheek. "My love, you need only raise this boy in your own image," she replied. "If you wish to do something, however, I would have you assist the More family."

He kissed away the tear, pressing his cheek to hers. "And that I will gladly do."

* * *

There is no record that anyone ever questioned the parentage of King Thomas I during his lifetime. His father, the unfortunate Henry VIII, hardly had the chance to raise the question before his death in a jousting accident in 1533, and the rest of the court never seemed to wonder why the supposedly barren Queen had fallen pregnant at age 42 just as the King's Great Matter was about to reach the ecclesiastical courts. The only evidence – and scarce it is – lies in the Queen's naming of John More, then Viscount Gobions, as co-Lord Protector of the realm along with George Boleyn, Viscount Rochford.

The matter only came to the eye of scholars in 2012, when Hannah de Vries of the University of Toronto discovered a discrepancy in Queen Katherine's Privy Purse accounts which led her to investigate why the Queen had paid the travel expenses of an 'elderly Italian monk' who had been stranded in Calais over the winter and, more importantly, why those expenses had been hidden in the falconer's books. Further investigation by de Vries revealed that a monk of indeterminate origin known only as 'Tomasso de la Follia' had joined a small but still extant monastery at Mount Soracte outside of Rome in June of 1529. Abbey records describe the monk as a man of great holiness, erudition, and dedication to God, so much so that upon his death in 1558 his cell and its contents were preserved intact. The current abbot agreed in 2013 to allow Dr. de Vries to examine the few letters the monk had left; one letter in particular led her to publish a paper in the _English Historical Review_ suggesting that the monk was indeed Thomas More and that he was indeed the natural father of King Thomas I. Comparison of the great portrait of King Thomas by William Scrots with a lesser-known Holbein portrait of More owned by his descendant the Duke of Somerset lent further credence, if not certainty, to that hypothesis.

The matter remained thusly until the accession of King Thomas VII in April 2015. A trained historian who before his accession published numerous well-regarded scholarly and popular works on the social history of the late Industrial Revolution, Thomas Tudor was pleased to order the remains of both his ancestor and John More, the 1st Duke of Somerset, exhumed from where they lay within 200 feet of each other in Westminster Abbey. The results of DNA analysis confirmed that the two were indeed half-brothers. "It is beyond reasonable doubt," Dr. de Vries announced at the press conference, "that the two individuals exhumed at Westminster Abbey on 19 May 2015 are closely related. Approximately 28.5% of the DNA regions examined are fully identical, including all of those located on the Y chromosome, but there is no match with the mitochondrial DNA. The most likely relationship is that of half-brothers who share a father."

King Thomas welcomed the news. "The Constitution is what keeps me on my throne, not the identity of my nineteenth great-grandfather," he told a reporter for the Telegraph on his way from Mass that morning. "All in all I'd rather be Thomas More's descendant than Henry Tudor's; wouldn't you?"


End file.
